


irrelevant

by superstarrgirl



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: angst abounds, broken!niall is my fave niall to write, go ahead, its basically ot5, not like group sex or anything, so i'm terribly sorry but, there aren't really any like relationships but if you reeeeeeally wanna look at it that way, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-08 02:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superstarrgirl/pseuds/superstarrgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>marks like that make people grow up too fast, darling</p>
            </blockquote>





	irrelevant

**Author's Note:**

> hey ho! this is pretty angsty, not gonna lie, might be a little triggering depending. there's cutting and near-death and alcoholism (sorta, not really). again, not really much of relationships going on except friendship because i do love my ot5 friendship, but maybe if you really really really squint there is some? kinda whatever you make it, i guess. so, you know, read, enjoy!

Niall is fourteen the first time he presses a blade to his wrist in the dark of the bathroom, fourteen the first time he watches blood spill down long, pale arms, fourteen the first time he ever thinks, _pain is good_.

Niall is fourteen the first time he is abused, used by someone he thought maybe loved him, and then tossed aside like a doll, useless, abandoned, a broken boy with bleeding wrists and an oh-so-empty heart that’s only ever been taught to fear. Taught to fear boys with predatory scowls, taught to fear girls with pointy teeth, taught to fear anything that gets too close, that can see too far into him. He is fourteen when he is taught that love is a myth, written on the walls of a world he will never get to experience.

Niall is fifteen when Greg leaves, when Greg disappears, when Greg forgets that he has a family, and if Niall isn’t screwed up enough, he is now. Greg leaves home one night and never comes back, never calls, never speaks to his little brother. Niall is fifteen when he learns that even family do not stick around for long, that even family leaves you, in the end.

Niall is sixteen, a man-boy with guarded eyes and broken teeth and a smile that hides walls built so high he can’t see over them, when he meets Zayn, Louis, Liam and Harry.

Zayn is a mystery, growing up in a world full of girls, growing up too fast and growing up too slow as well (Niall doesn’t tell him that growing up doesn’t come with age, not really).

Louis is Peter Pan, who wants to remain a forever boy, who wants to watch the clouds in the morning and who wants to cup the world in the palm of his hand (Niall doesn’t tell him that the world cannot be held with one hand). 

Liam is serious and sensible, with a view of a world that Niall has yet to learn and eyes like pools of melted chocolate, eyes that Niall could drown in (Niall doesn’t tell him that he knows the world better than Liam does, has drowned in eyes of his own and has never fully resurfaced).

Harry is wonder and beauty and hope, a source of light at the end of a long, narrow tunnel, a savior when Niall has forgotten to fly (Niall doesn’t tell him that he never truly learned how).

Niall is seventeen, the world at his fingertips, everything within reach yet so far away. Niall is seventeen and hunched over a porcelain bowl in Paris, razor digging into well worn cuts. Niall is seventeen when he understands that the world is not made of superheroes, no Batmans or Iron Mans to save the day. There are no heroes for Niall – no one is saving him, they’re all busy saving themselves.

Niall is eighteen when Louis notices the slashes on his wrists, notices the way his eyes hang heavy, a weight placed on his shoulders that Niall can’t carry, crumbling under the weight. Niall is eighteen when Louis taps at the bathroom door at 2am and doesn’t wait for a response, merely waltzes in, plucks the razor from his hand and tells him, _enough_.

 _Pain is good_ , Niall responds softly, doesn’t say that he can’t feel the cuts anymore, can’t feel the blood seeping from the empty bag of bones that he has become. He can only feel the shell of his heart, dead but beating, empty and lost inside his own body.

 _Pain is pain_ , Louis answers shortly, _this, the razors, will numb you but never ease the hurt_. It doesn’t make sense to eighteen-year-old Niall, but it will (one day). 

Niall is eighteen, still a child, still fearful of crowds and screwing up and letting himself grow to love four boys that are not his, when Louis tells him, _marks like that make people grow up too fast_. Niall doesn’t understand that until he’s nineteen and wakes up in a hospital bed.

Niall is nineteen with a blood transfusion, strangers giving parts of themselves to save him. Niall is nineteen with eyes so full of bitterness, storm clouds brewing dark and heavy. Niall is nineteen with white bandages on his wrists and four boys crowded around him, asking question after question after question and demanding answers that Niall doesn’t have. Niall is nineteen when he’s no longer a child, when he stops seeking the comfort of the boys and starts seeking the comfort of what is found at the bottom of a bottle. Niall is nineteen when Zayn stops looking at him reverently and starts looking at him like china, like he’s going to break.

(And he just might.)

Niall is twenty years old, bleeding under the covers of an unfamiliar hotel room. Niall is twenty and breaking, splitting at the seams, pulling apart the sticky tape that held him together (and it was a shit job, but at least he tried, really). Niall is twenty when he falls from the sky, when someone rips his cape of his back and tells him with eyes like ice, _flap your wings, little bird, go on, see how you can fly without them._ Niall is twenty years old when Louis bans him from any and all alcohol and removes the razor blades from the bus. 

Niall is twenty years old when all that he had to keep him going is suddenly ripped from underneath him, when there’s no magic carpet to keep him in the air.

Niall is twenty-one when he breaks, shatters, snaps clean in two. Alcohol numbs him, burns through his veins, and he forgets to count the lines, forgets to count the scars, forgets to smile when it’s expected and forgets to stretch high enough to touch the stars. Niall is twenty-one when Liam finds him on the floor of a bathroom in Australia, bleeding and gasping for air yet begging for death.

Niall is twenty-one when, once again, he wakes up in a hospital bed, hooked up to IVs and told, he is lucky to have made it out alive. No, he wants to say. He’s not lucky enough to be dead. Death is for the brave, and he is a coward. 

Zayn is the only one there when he wakes, and Zayn does not demand answers, Zayn does not whisper poems into the broken skin of Niall’s wrist, Zayn does not tell Niall to stop drowning or start kicking or stop fucking breaking. Zayn only looks, only stares, Zayn only forgets to remind himself to breathe because if Niall is not breathing, not living, then what right does he have to be?

Harry, Liam and Louis come stumbling in an hour later, Harry throwing himself onto Niall like a blanket, a sedative, his long curls full of words that won’t be spoken. Liam stands beside him and looks at Niall as though the younger boy is full of sand, made of glass, a case, a boy to be protected. Louis does not hide the anger, does not need to because Niall understands.

 _Please, please, no more_ , Harry begs into Niall’s collarbone, knees digging in like a reminder. Niall wants to cry, buries his face in Harry’s skin, warm like melted butter and whispers back, _okay_.

Niall is twenty-two and piecing himself together, bit by bit, stuck together with duct tape and sticky tape and words of encouragement shouted by girls whose names he’ll never learn. Niall is twenty-two and Liam is coaching him to fly, Niall is twenty-two and Louis is showing him the keys of a piano, Niall is twenty-two and Zayn is instructing him on how to paint the colors of a sunset, Niall is twenty-two and Harry is teaching him that he doesn’t have to do this alone. 

Niall is twenty-three with guitar in hand and the world in the other. Niall is twenty-three and no longer shying away from grabby hands, embracing the contact, embracing love and touches of girls with eyes so bright and full and electric, eyes so warm and sweet and inviting, eyes so dark and stormy and existing. Niall is twenty-three and the scars are gone from his body – there are no train tracks on wrists and no ladders on thighs and the answer is not in a bottle, but in the dimples on Harry’s smile, the curve of Louis’ cheekbones, the way Liam’s bottom lip juts out when he’s upset, the upward rise of Zayn’s eyelashes. Niall is twenty-three when he learns not to fear the world.

Niall is twenty-four and, for the first time for a long time, happy.

Niall is twenty-five and soaring, touching the moon.

Niall is twenty-six and never looking down. 

**Author's Note:**

> also, i am thinking of starting a multi chapter fic (Niall and Zayn, course), but i don't have the best of luck with chaptered…any thoughts on the matter?


End file.
